User talk:Ldm1954

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I've had an interaction over Nonmetal already and I concluded the hatnote was correct but the article has the wrong name, see Talk:Nonmetal#Nonmetal_elements?. It's basically an article like say Group 3 element about some elements. The chemistry content is ok but the rest is just a pile of factoids about some elements. Since there are a couple of committed editors involved I decided to move on. Some day I will work on nonmetal (physics) and look at the issue again. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BEBOLD. I just went through cutting out some clear errors and added some tags to Nonmetal. Removing a paragraph/sentence here are there does not need to be first raised in talk unless it is contraversial.

The Nonmetal (physics) page is awful. Maybe we should have "Nonmetallic phases" and just rewrite and rename. Ldm1954 (talk) 10:44, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The nonmetal (physics) stub was added last week, I believe in response to my complaint that the topic article nonmetal should either include physics or be renamed "nonmetal elements" with an additional "nonmetal (physics)". Johnjbarton (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The general topic of the article is fine and standard chemistry; I agree with you that they wander way off topic and have added a long list to the talk page. You will see that I included your term for it in the 1st sentence.

I rewrote the stub which is now Nonmetallic compounds and elements. Feel free to add to it or change it. Later some of the links to Nonmetal can be changed. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:25, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

N.B., you may want to comment on my RfD to move Nonmetal back to Nonmetal (chemistry), perhaps in an hour or so. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck with your efforts. Topics related to periodic table, nonmetals, metalloids are often the domain of editors who are rather territorial and do not subscribe to contemporary views (say, Shriver and Atkins) of chemistry and materials science. --Smokefoot (talk) 14:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Smokefoot: Periodic table and Metalloid are encyclopedic FA articles, based on reliable sources rather than personal views lacking WP:NOTABILITY.

I'm attempting to apply the same approach to Nonmetal despite the non-encyclopedic views of OPs. Wait! "Great God, could it be(?)": Shriver & Atkins are mentioned in both Metalloid and in Nonmetal!

--- Sandbh (talk) 14:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Sandbh: please keep it up with Shriver and Atkins. A good resource for learning.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ldm1954 :) I'm looking for experienced editors to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As you saw, I wrote a question here, and then deleted it. :)

However, this may amuse you. Looking through the latest volume of posthumous notes, it seems like Tolkien in his very late "de-mythicising" phase may have considered an unusual way to solve the problem that all elements that could plausibly fit Gandalf's description (if you squint and assume "make of it a metal" involves alloying) would not be available to a medieval-tech society. From "Elvish Reincarnation", c. 1959 (published in "The Nature of Middle-earth"), we have the following quotes from in-universe loremasters: it can thus happen that in comparing a quantity of one nassë with another equal quantity of the same nassë the subtle in skill may find that the one quantity contains únehtar (the smallest quantities possible in which the interior pattern that distinguishes it from other nassi is exhibited) varying somewhat from the norm ... It would rather be that iron was changed into something else, and became another nassë, whether by force external applied to it, or by its own instability. Though in the case of certain nassi that appear “by nature” to be thus “unstable”, breaking up or changing their inner patterns normally under like conditions...

As noted by the editorial footnotes, this sounds a whole lot like an Elvish understanding of atomic theory, isotopes, and radioactivity being transmutation (with both artificial and natural radioactivity being considered). So, maybe I shouldn't have been worrying about the practicalities of getting aluminium after all. Rather I should've wondered if Eregion and Moria working together could've gotten around to plutonium before Sauron came. I guess, in this less magical-mythical conception, LOTR was extremely post-apocalyptic. :D

(Seriously speaking, I doubt this idea would've been taken up. It only seems to be in this one unfinished essay, and parts of it involving Elvish reincarnation are specifically contradicted by later essays. But it amuses me that Tolkien ever considered such a conception at all.) Double sharp (talk) 17:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting comments. Yes, I did review Mithril; I definitely enjoy Tolkien although I confess I have not got involved in the fan discussions. It was relaxing to review something where no claims of "I am right and the rest of you are wrong" were involved.

One comment. When I read the section you quote there might also be a reference to changing the microstructure by mechanical, heat and (my speculation) magic. When a blacksmith is heat treating and quenching they are setting up specific structure at the 10-100nm scale without changing the overall chemical composition; the article heat treatment is not a bad start. Understanding this was one of the early successes of metallurgy, and there would have been people around at Leeds/Oxford who would have known this. The Damascus steel article is decent, and maybe George Martin's Valerian steel is (my speculation) a hybrid of Damascus steel and mithril. Not too implausible based upon what I see in a quick search on details from a Game of Thrones fan site, and it seems that this idea is not new to me. Ldm1954 (talk) 09:37, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I like your reading! That would preserve únehta as having to mean "atom" in Quenya etymologically, while accurately describing polymorphism and how different lattice structures are stabilised at different temperatures. Though your idea gives me a thought: might it also be possible to use magic to drive a reaction to the desired equilibrium? Suddenly mithril as aluminium or vanadium seems to be a valid possibility again. :) (Also, it gives me the thought of Fëanor with his fiery spirit singing up metallic sodium from baking soda. What fun. Seriously, I guess it must not be that easy.)

Personally, those are the two choices among real elements that I like, since they fit Gandalf's description: something lighter than steel, that is malleable on its own, but acts as a hardening and anti-corrosion agent when alloyed with steel. Al would fit very well with re-enchanting the most mundane of all metals, and V was the key trace element that made Damascus steel so unique. But considering that it seems to be rare outside Moria, maybe V is after all the better stand-in for fannish purposes, since it tends to be widely scattered and concentrated deposits are uncommon. Galvorn as Ta is an interesting thought for a fannish stand-in: it is dark, malleable, and hard as it should be per the Silmarillion description, though I'd hate to actually have to use it as armour. (Though, do we need to? The Silmarillion was published posthumously and that armour is not mentioned in every version. Anyway, I don't mean to claim that these are the "correct" identifications or anything like that. Just that they seem good enough to use as stand-ins for fannish purposes as a kind of extended in-joke.)

There's one other late essay published in that volume that has an interesting implication on the state of Elvish chemistry as Tolkien may have seen it. From the discussion "Fate and Free Will": the Eldar would have said that for all Elves and Men the shape, condition, and therefore the past and future physical development and destiny of this “earth” was determined and beyond their power to change, indeed beyond the power even of the Valar to alter in any large and permanent way. (They distinguished between “change” and redirection. Thus any “rational [?will-user]” could in a small way move, re-direct, stop, or destroy objects in the world; but he could not “change” [them] into something else. They did not confuse analysis with change, e.g. water/steam, oxygen, hydrogen.) Probably the Doylist reason behind why H₂O is given as the example is that it's one of the most well-known chemical formulae. But it has interesting Watsonian implications, because historically we spent a whole lot of time getting combustion backwards with phlogiston, and this implies that the Elves had things the right way round. The essay "Dark and Light" from the same volume suggests that Elvish astronomy was also advanced, since it says that their picture before meeting the Valar was geocentric only as regards the Sun, Moon, and certain stars (“companions of the Sun” or wayward stars = our planets). This sounds a lot like a Tychonian system if they thought the planets were specifically companions of the Sun, which is the best one can do without having Newton's theory or being able to observe stellar parallax. Putting these two nuggets of information together, the Elves look almost like medieval folks who kept guessing as right as they plausibly could scientifically. Maybe this is the result of the loremasters having foresight, which leads to thoughts about how Tolkien seems to have intended them as his take on theologically unfallen humans. Ah well, it's all good fun taking this too seriously. :) Double sharp (talk) 13:44, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They asked Maxwell's demon to help... Ldm1954 (talk) 14:02, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, so that's how the Rings were preventing and slowing decay. :-P Double sharp (talk) 02:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for not rejecting the submission of this draft. I added many new sources and expanded the article description and added two more subsections. Hope that the article might pass the next stage. Thanks for your review. @Maikarnold Maikarnold (talk) 18:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks better. I won't review it a second time, so good luck with it when you resubmit. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:32, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]